The Front Range is a hotbed of innovation and passion for quality food with real flavor and real nutritional value. Whether it’s the micro-brews, coffee, chocolate, heirloom vegetables, pasture-raised meats, or ancient grains, or the gluten-free, paleo, keto, or vegan diet, Front Range Coloradans have shown great support and enthusiasm for slow, locally-grown, organic, fair-trade and creative, locally hand-crafted foods.
You can pick up a mouth-full or a basket-full of some of our favorite locally crafted specialty foods this month at our Holiday Gift Market. All of them will easily keep through the holidays and beyond.
These are exceptional products made by people we know and trust. In previous years we’ve been able to offer samples of our edible selections, but because of the pandemic, we only have samples of a few products that we can offer you upon request. However, you can take our word for it: these specialty foods are fabulous!
Our delicious Specialty Foods make perfect stocking stuffer and host(ess) gifts!
ANELLABEES HONEY CANDY
We’re delighted to introduce a new kid on the block, Anella, whose passion for beekeeping (and candy) from very early childhood, inspired a joint venture, Anellabees Honey Candy, with her mom, Danielle, who wanted to create a honey-based candy with quality ingredients, free of the unnecessary, unhealthy ingredients, like high-fructose corn syrup, soy, gluten, preservatives, and artificial flavors, found in most confections. Eve found Ft. Collins based Anellabees honey candies last fall and fell in love with the delicious hard candies, molded in an old confectionery press from the 1880, and their honey caramel. Their honey is sourced from beekeepers in the U.S. and all additional ingredients – spices, butter, and dairy, are organic and rbGH-free. Anellabees gives back by donating a portion of their sales to organizations like PPAN, CO Farm & Food Alliance, and World Bee Project who are doing the essential work of protecting our planet, people, and pollinators.
BEE SQUARED
Honey is perhaps the ultimate natural treat, a gift from the bees, who gathered the nectar for it from the flowers. Honey is also medicine, with a history going back millennia (at least!), used for easing and treating an incredible range of ailments. The most efficacious honey is from local hives, and we are thrilled to offer award-winning, delicious, raw, unfiltered, honey from Beth Conrey of Bee Squared, who keeps hives at locations around Boulder, Larimer, Denver and Adams counties, collecting from clover, alfalfa, wildflowers and natural landscapes. We also offer Bee Squared’s wildly popular infused honeys – Rose (made with organic rose petals from a biodynamic farm in Fort Collins), Whiskey Barrel Aged, aged for many months in whiskey barrels that impart complex smokey nuances, Vanilla & Saffron with their heady, warm aromas and flavors, and Fennel Pollen – infused, Eve’s personal favorite, with a gentle but sprightly sweet licorice flavor that’s heavenly in baked good, glazes and teas. We’re also offering their ever-popular natural honeycomb.
CULTURA CRAFT CHOCOLATE
Did we mention chocolate??? Eve is a chocolate afficionado. This makes her very fussy about chocolate. Poor thing! She had to taste a lot of chocolates from local producers before choosing the very best, Cultura Craft Chocolate. If you are looking for locally produced chocolate bars made from the finest fair-trade cacao beans, with the most exquisite flavors, ground to the smoothest textures, with no unnecessary additives like soy lecithin and other fillers, look no further!
A micro-batch, bean-to-bar, award-winning chocolate, Cultura is produced in Denver and is woman-owned. They use only beans from ethically sourced and organic cacao farms in Latin America, which they hand sort, crack, roast, winnow, grind, conche, temper and mold to bring out the richest aromas and flavors and the smoothest textures. We believe this is the very best chocolate produced in Colorado. We are offering their superlative chocolate bars in multiple innovative flavors (some new!) and sizes, as well as their delicious Mexican style Sipping Chocolate, Café de Olla – a delicious traditional spiced Mexican coffee/chocolate brew, and Heirloom Atole Mix – a Prehispanic beverage from the state of Chiapas, made with their 70% Mexico chocolate, organic toasted red corn, organic raw sugar, achiote and chile peppers.
ROBIN’S CHOCOLATE
One of the best flavor pairings with chocolate is ginger, and our local Longmont chocolatier, Robin’s Chocolate, makes wonderful Chocolate-Drazzled Crystallized Ginger Root. We keep bringing in more bags as they sell quickly!
ST. CLAIR’S ORGANIC MINTS, CANDIES, PASTILLES & LOZENGES
If you have ever looked at the list of ingredients on a package of lozenges or pastilles, you know that it’s frightening to think of actually ingesting all those chemicals and corn-based ‘natural’ flavors, high-fructose corn syrup, artificial sweeteners, and who knows what else! St. Claire’s to the rescue! These are formulated and produced by our herbalist friend Deb St. Claire, using simple, organically grown ingredients and sweetened with nutrient-rich organic molasses. Eve always keeps some Tummy Soothers and Throat Soothers handy because they really work. And the herbal and fruit pastilles are some of the healthiest little indulgences out there. Some exciting new flavors were added a couple of years ago: Cinnamon, Cardamom, and Ginger! – Coming soon!
ENGRID’S HAYSTACK FARM JAMS
Engrid’s Haystack Farm jams are lovingly produced in small batches from organic, mostly Colorado-grown (often hand-picked by Engrid) fruits with their true flavors singing out, unimpeded by excessive sugar. Some of our customers horde a year’s supply at a time, so don’t delay!
This year’s flavors include Apricot, Apricot Rosemary, Berry Blend, Black Raspberry, Ginger Peach Marmalade, Tomato, Marionberry, Raspberry Peach, Santa Rosa Plum, Sour Cherry, Strawberry Rhubarb! Ginger Peach Marmalade, Blueberry, Pear & Vanilla Bean, and Marionberry. (The last three will arrive in the second week of October.)
EVE’S PECAN SHORTBREAD COOKIES
Then there are Eve’s grain-free, gluten-free Pecan Shortbread Cookies, which she only makes for our Holiday Market. Eve takes the trouble to ‘sprout’ and toast the organic pecans to make them optimally digestible. The butter she uses is churned from cream produced by pasture-raised cows. The salt is Celtic Sea-salt, the vanilla extract is made from real, organic vanilla beans, and the hint of sweetness comes from organic Grade A Maple Syrup. These incredibly delicious, no-guilt cookies will melt in your mouth and satisfy your cravings without loading you up with bad fats and sugars.